Empire Files: 100 years of war experimentation using American soldiers as lab rats – By Abby Martin

Abby Martin examines how the U.S. military-industrial complex has contaminated the health and lives of countless soldiers over the years.

The latest episode of teleSUR’s Empire Files looks into decades of experimentation on U.S. troops — from nuclear tests to psychotropic drugs — as well as knowingly exposing them to deadly poisons, from sarin gas to Agent Orange.

Abby Martin delves into the decades of abuse perpetrated by the U.S. dating back to post-WWII, servicemen were subjected to countless, clandestine “tests” on the effects of radiation exposure.

In this same period, lobotomies were performed on 2,000 soldiers, for things like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, and even homosexuality. The procedure left these soldiers as little more than oversized children.

“There was never any accountability for destroying the lives and minds of thousands of soldiers,” Martin explains.

U.S. government denies 80 percent of insurance claims from veterans of the first war on Iraq, even though one similar program cost less than a third of a warplane. An estimated 250,000 servicemen are expected to endure lasting effects from their service there.

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers were also exposed to sarin gas during the two wars, not because the Iraqi army used it, but because they were ordered to destroy stockpiles and then breathed it.

Officers told their subordinates to disregard the alarms meant to inform them it was time to evacuate. The Department of Defense admitted in 2015 what had happened.

Depleted uranium shells, intended to maximize destruction, have also poisoned both civilians and servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cancer rates in Iraq skyrocketed after the invasions, as did rates of birth defects in hospitals in Fallujah, one of the cities hardest-hit by these toxic shells.

Politicians espousing the mantra of “support the troops” are not the friends of servicemen, Martin claims, “but their greatest enemy.”